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Design News has an article and slide show piece on electric dragsters. The car pictured here is Mike Willmon’s electric Pinto, the Crazyhorse. The infamous Pinto gas tank (and the back seat) has been replaced with 848 lbs of lead-acid battery. The car is powered by two nine-inch diameter brush DC motors, coupled back-to-back. The Crazyhorse uses the Cafe Electric Zilla motor controller, which allows you to slam huge amounts of current (up to 2,000 amps!) into the motors to blast the car off the line like any respectable fuel-based dragster. Last year, the Crazyhorse did a quarter-mile in 12.47 seconds.

Gareth Branwyn is a freelancer writer and the former Editorial Director of Maker Media. He is the author or editor of over a dozen books on technology, DIY, and geek culture. He is currently a contributor for Boing Boing and WINK Books. And he has a new best-of writing collection and “lazy man’s memoir,” called Borg Like Me.

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Sitting in front of an original Pinto gas tank, or 800lbs of flesh-consuming, lung corroding sulphuric ACID???

Dustbuster

Gerry, 800-odd pounds of *lead*-acid battery. I’ll let you figure out how much of that weight is acid. And its not exactly B-grade horror movie acid that melts through anything. The acid in a battery will give you a burn, but your won’t lose a limb (or even a finger for that matter).